Victims and Victimization

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ExplainingViolence.ppt
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Explaining Violence

H174, Prevention of Violence in American Society

Cheryl L. Holmes

Why are humans violent?

  • Answer is not straightforward!
  • No SINGLE answer
  • Even with a single precipitating event, perpetrator has a multitude of reasons for choosing to use violence
  • A number of factors influence violent behavior

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Factors Influencing Violent Behavior

  • Our behavior is the result of numerous elements that interact and sway our behavior in complex ways.
  • Many factors influence behavior and there is NO ONE factor predictive of behavior.
  • Some factors work consciously; some work subconsciously.
  • No time in history and no location on our planet has been free of violence.
  • Given the same situations, different persons react differently.

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Evolutionary

  • Humans evolved to inhabit a world where violent behavior proved necessary for survival.

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Chimpanzees

  • Genetically humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, sharing 96-99% of the same DNA.
  • Humans are closer genetically to chimps than chimps are to gorillas.
  • Chimpanzee violence can demonstrate the evolutionary root of human violence.
  • Jane Goodall popularized the perception of the peaceful chimpanzee.

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Chimps

  • Researchers have documented chimps:
  • Attack and kill males from rival groups
  • Stalk and ambush males from rival groups
  • Patrol boundaries of their territory and attack trespassers
  • Engage in raids of rival groups, kill the males, incorporate the females into their group
  • Male on female violence, similar to human domestic violence.
  • Also attack humans!

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Human and Chimp Violence - Similarities

  • Chimp violence in general, battering in particular, are largely male perpetrated.
  • Female chimps are less aggressive and less violent than male chimps.
  • Same is true for humans.
  • One of the most consistent patterns of violence: it is mostly perpetrated by males.
  • True the world over.
  • Most violence victims and offenders are men.

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Humans and Chimps

  • Often violence revolves around issues of status and dominance.
  • Once a male chimp achieves high status, his use of violence falls dramatically.
  • Much chimp violence is used to achieve and maintain a higher rank.
  • How does this differ from humans?

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Is Everyone Capable of Violent Behavior?

Under what circumstance(s) could you become violent?

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Evolutionary Theories

  • Early work = faulty research
  • Crime was perpetrated by DEFECTIVE individuals.
  • Criminals were born not made.
  • Only “nature”, DNA, mattered.

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Later Research

  • Criminal characteristics are no more common in criminal populations that in the general population.
  • However, these theories have had long term influence.
  • Do we still use physical characteristics and appearance to categorize other people? How?

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Like Minded Theories

  • Viewed crime and violence coming from certain types of individuals and populations.
  • Inherently crime prone and violent.
  • Often feeble minded and defective.
  • Implications of these theories used to justify:
  • Racism
  • Discrimination
  • Oppression
  • Slavery
  • Genocide

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One example: Eugenics

  • Attempts to improve human race through selective breeding, forced sterilization programs, genocide, and other practices.
  • Holocaust may be the best example of this. Nazis murdered:
  • 6 million Jews
  • 5 million others

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Why Have We Favored These Theories?

  • Can be used to avoid examining potentially difficult social and economic issues:
  • Racism
  • Discrimination
  • Poverty
  • Social inequities
  • Provides an easy solution: “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key!”
  • In effect, these attitudes can be used to justify policies that decrease competition for positions in the middle and upper classes.

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Neurotransmitters and Hormones

  • Serotonin
  • Neurotransmitter produced in the brain
  • Acts as a chemical messenger allowing nerve impulses to travel between synaptic gaps
  • Helps signals over the gap and allows the signal to proceed
  • Acts as impulse inhibitor
  • Deficiency is linked to depression, anxiety, suicide. Also linked to impulsive, aggressive acts.

Neurotransmitters and Hormones

  • Testosterone
  • Some have suggested that male aggression is linked to testosterone.
  • Some animal studies show a strong relationship between testosterone and aggression
  • In humans, the relationship is far more complicated.
  • Some research has linked higher levels of testosterone in violent offenders than non-violent offenders.
  • Some research has not.

Brain Injuries

  • Includes lesions of the brain caused by injuries, tumors and other types of trauma
  • Antisocial and violent individuals have been evaluated by MRI and PET
  • These studies indicate that violent offenders, particularly impulsively aggressive individuals, often have brain dysfunctions believed to have predisposed the violent behavior
  • It’s not unreasonable to expect that someone prone to violence is more likely to experience head injuries

Psychological Factors

  • Roy Baumeister and W. Keith Campbell
  • Suggest that violence has an “intrinsic” appeal for some people
  • Risk taking behavior provides thrills, kicks, excitement to the bored

Psychological Factors

  • Baumeister and Campbell (cont.)
  • Three reasons why violence can be enjoyable
  • Sadism
  • Gratification from performing high risk, potentially destructive behavior
  • Satisfaction gained from harming someone who has damaged your self image

Psychological Factors

  • Stress and violence
  • Certain minority groups are overrepresented as both perpetrators and victims of crime
  • Includes homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault
  • Black victimization rates uniformly exceed that of whites

Psychological Factors

  • Patterns largely due to overrepresentation of minority communities among the poor where they suffer economic deprivation, discrimination, and racism
  • Violence is not distributed equally across our society; it occurs more frequently among some groups and in some locations

Psychological Factors

  • Chronic stress puts tremendous strain on organs and systems
  • Short term OK
  • Long term, wears out our body’s ability to react
  • Violence in poor communities may result, at least in part, from a declining ability to cope with stressful life situations

Economic Deprivation

  • Since early 20th century, found poor neighborhoods have higher rates of violence than those with higher incomes
  • But most poor people don’t engage in crime/violence
  • Scholars believe inequality (relative deprivation) is linked to violence

Economic Deprivation 2

  • Greater the gap between haves and have-nots, greater likelihood of violence
  • Much research indicates most powerful predictor of homicide rates between cities, states, counties, is the income inequality between rich and poor (51)

Strain Theory

  • Contend that blocked or frustrated needs and desires may result in criminality and violence
  • Poor people are under strain when they are denied access to conventional and legitimate means of success

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Merton’s anomie – a state of anomie would result when individuals live under conditions where legitimate means are not available to meet societal goals.

Anomie: social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values; also : personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals

Social Learning Theory

  • Violent behavior is learned
  • Learn through:
  • Conditioning
  • Reinforcement
  • Imitation
  • Modeling

Social Learning Theory 2

  • Individuals learn to respond aggressively and violently when they –
  • Are rewarded for it,
  • Observe it,
  • Are victimized by it, and
  • When they don’t develop strong personal connections with others.

Social Learning Theory 3

  • Differential Association Theory
  • If you associate with individuals and groups who use violence and have attitudes supporting and justifying the use of violence, then you are more likely to engage in violence yourself.
  • Friends, family, and acquaintances teach not only techniques of violence but motivations and attitudes supporting that behavior.

Social Learning Theory 4

  • Violent media images:
  • Help teach us how to interpret and react to conflictual situations and make a violent reaction more likely.
  • Desensitize people to violence.
  • Lower our threshold of acceptance to violent behavior.
  • Increase the chances we will resort to violent behavior.

Cycle of Violence

  • Intergenerational Transmission of Violence Theory.
  • Literature on domestic violence consistently finds that those who are witness to or experience violence and abuse as children are more likely to perpetrate it or fall victim to it as adults. Risk of chronic disease increases for them as well.